Congressional leaders late last year secretly agreed to fund and expand a Bush administration push for covert operations against Iran, according to a new investigative piece by Seymour Hersch in the New Yorker.
Considering the administration’s track record in Iraq, one must ask: Why?
The White House objective, according to Hersch’s inside sources, is to destabilize Iran’s religious leadership, foment regime change, and lay the groundwork for a possible U.S. military strike before President Bush leaves office. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other Pentagon leaders are said to have strongly opposed a military strike.
It’s startling that Democratic congressional leadership would sign off on such an operation, given a National Intelligence Estimate in December that concluded Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. One source is quoted as saying that the oversight process had been “co-opted” by the White House: “The process is broken, and this is dangerous stuff we’re authorizing.”
Hersch’s piece portrays a president who remains committed to regime change in the Middle East and isn’t going to go quietly from office.
18 Comments
If they did they need to be voted out.
This is the way that Bush licks the Zionist’s boots.
Randy
Do your homework.
PLEASE!
The National Intelligence Estimate you site is highly suspect, had many dissenters, at the time, and has been amended, a bit, by reality and further study.
Don’t you go to war with the intelligence you have, not the intelligence you’d like to have?
Didn’t I hear that somewhere before??
Sarcasm OFF.
Don’t they realize that interfering with Iran’s internal affairs STRENGHTENS the regime?
Again, Randy, STUDY, this stuff is too important for you to “wing it” like you usually try to do:
“In 2006, the United Nation Security Council passed a resolution banning trade with Iran in materials and technology which could contribute to its enrichment of uranium, the material for a possible nuclear weapon.
“Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so,” said a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released by the U.S. spy agencies late last year.
Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, the NIE said, but “Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.”
The Iranians probably would be capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons sometime after 2010, about two years from now, the NIE reported.
An attack on its nuclear sites could cause Iran to attack shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s total daily oil demand is carried.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25442607/
This kind of representation is not what the people really want.
I do NOT like being in the role of an aggressor, if we are not actually being attack.
If they were to proceed with this, they will have more than one battle to fight, more then one enemy to fight, both foreign and domestic.
“if it decides to do so”
Most industrially advanced countries have that capability. So, I guess you are saying that Iran should not have industry and electricity because it could use those technologies for defense?
yawn…
If we invade Iran will the cost of the occupation be paid for by oil revenues? And will it be over in “weeks, maybe months, definitely not years”?
Even as Iran has an active covert operation against our troops in Iraq, against stability in Iraq, and promoting secretarian violence, the liberals sit here questioning our having one against them????
The Iranians have been teaching the insurgents how to attack our troops, how to set up bombs against them, and supplying them with the things to do it.
Nathan - my point is that such efforts tend to backfire. I want nothing more than to see the Mullahs out of power. Unfortunately by intervening we give them a unifying target.
Hind Sight is 20-20.
5 years from now, if Iran starts a nuclear war and/or blocks the flow of 40% of the worlds oil from the mid-east, y’all neutrality types will be b*tching that nothing was done pre-emptively to stop it. And you’ll really b*tch at the price of gas of $20/gal and gas shortages if the gulf oil is shut-off.
Look at how y’all are b*tching now about $4/gal gas! When gas hits $6/gal, y’all will be marching in the streets and DEMANDING that we drill in Anwar and the East/West Coasts, and mine shale oil immediately!
$6/gal - THAT is the magic number when y’all will stop givin a darn about Global Warming and Environmental damage.
Our national debt has gone through the roof and we’re considering another war? Now that’s just crazy. What is it about the righties that always makes them want to blow something or somebody up?
I had no problem supporting Republicans when they were for fiscal discipline and smaller government, but in the past 10 years they’ve become something else. The party of endless war and spending like drunken sailors. One only needs to compare this administration to the last. Under Clinton we had peace and prosperity. With Bush, we have massive government expansion, crushing debt, a major terrorist attack on American soil, and the most flagrant attack on our Constitution in the history of this country.
The Republican party has become so corrupt. We really need to turn them out in November. The Democrat party isn’t much better, but maybe it’ll take them a while to sink to the level that the Republicans have.
Yeah, like the French intervening in the US Revolutionary War was a bad thing.
Anyone recall the Battle of Yorktown?
Bullshit. Propaganda, and Nathan loves being a chump.
MaxGrobnik posted July 1, 2008 at 2:00 pm
“When gas hits $6/gal, y’all will be marching in the streets and DEMANDING that we drill in Anwar and the East/West Coasts, and mine shale oil immediately!”
————
Uhhhh. . . Max?
What is the acronym for Arctic National WILDLIFE REFUGE?
MaxGrobnik’s “immediately!” equals a possibility, of a small amount of production, beginning a decade, or longer, from now.
A very easy increase of only 0.4 mpg in light vehicle gas mileage is GUARANTEED to “produce” about 3.2 BILLION barrels during the next 30 years.
We would easily “produce” with higher energy efficiency, many times more than what more domestic drilling MIGHT produce,
No Max, sane and lucid people will not wish that this country had done something that is totally against our very core beliefs. There is no justification in our moral being for a preemptive strike against someone that has not attacked us. In no court in this land can you justify killing or harming anyone of the chance they may someday attempt to harm you.
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Diuretics…
nice post about this…..